Based in London and Hong Kong, Holloway Li is an architecture and interior design studio that’s shaped hospitality into highly customized and bespoke destinations across the country. For a brand of apartment-style hotels, the studio designed Bermonds Locke in London and then Wunderlocke Hotel in Munich. The latest collaboration lands in London’s business district Canary Wharf. The site informs the concept: Locke London Canary Wharf adopts the office style of Mad Men, but with even more indulgences.
Set above the docks, the hotel encompasses 279 rooms across 19 floors. The sleek modernism of the television series particularly makes up the ground floor, where the lounge, library, bar, and cafe are located. Holloway Li spatially organizes the different programs like a series of filmic sets.
A curated vignette greets guests upon entry. Set beneath ceiling-mounted circular mirrors and atop parquet flooring, a Julep sofa by Tacchini and Pierre Frey armchairs mix color and animal prints, setting the sophisticated mood. Follow the burgundy and green hues down to the bar counter, where a precession of angled columns rhythmically divide the bar from coworking and casual seating areas. Bespoke oak bookshelves with wavy, bulky forms, mimicking the nearby River Thames, also help divide the open floorplan.
As with many Holloway Li projects, the studio outfitted the hotel with a bevy of custom designs, including its many details. A series of bespoke art rugs designed by Holloway Li in collaboration with Modersia defines each seating zone. Custom joinery runs throughout the project, fabricated by local East-end carpenters Craftworks Productions. This includes the DJ booth and greeter station. The former references Hans Hollein’s 1965 Retti Candle Shop, using sinuous steel forms from which headlights emerge.
While the lounge and bar is warm and brown-toned, the library cafe shifts into greens and blues. A chrome-dipped frame marks the shift into the new space. Seating from New Works, Audo Copenhagen, Sancal, and Ondaretta provide places to work or relax.
Upstairs, guestrooms are designed with a modular approach planned from the ground-up to be fitted-out entirely off site through a rigorous factory prototyping process. The rooms offer a calmer experience, using a palette of sage and dark walnut. The latter of which is used to create storage and a grid with reeded glass infills to divide the bed from the seating and dining area, while still enabling light to reach through the partitions. The seating likens itself to a smaller-scale seating pit, a nod to the ’60s glamour of Don and Megan Draper’s apartment in Mad Men.
Green continues into the bathrooms, where the shower is separated from the rest in order to allow for the modularity construction. A nook houses the shower, clad in sage tiles and brass hardware. The wash closet continues the monochromatic palette with a terrazzo vanity shelf and striped tiles, inspired by ‘60s interiors.
In any vignette or corner, it’s easy to imagine enjoying a three-martini lunch here. Such is the rigorous yet lush vision of Holloway Li, adapted to incorporate the site and context of Locke London Canary Wharf.
